Once In A While
by Pegasus
Summary: Donna's mother has a moment to think about the Doctor's words in the wake of 'Journey's End'


_**Disclaimer: **__The Doctor, the TARDIS and the other locations and characters referred to in this story do not belong to me. (Apart from the little bit of the Earth that I happen to be standing on). The characters and majority of places belong to all those lucky, lucky people who get to own the Doctor Who copyright and write for it all the time. I don't. I get to write for it when inspiration strikes and in a futile effort to empty my head out of these little unseen moments. This story is an entirely non-profit making venture and is in no way meant to impinge on copyright in any way, shape or form._

**Author's Note**

I was rather touched by Donna's mother's reaction to the Doctor telling her how brilliant her daughter was and this inspired the following story. I have taken a couple of creative liberties with Donna's father.

**Once In A While**

Donna Noble had been known to say, in her more introspective moments, that her mother disapproved of everything she did. Her earliest memories seemed to be rife with episodes of Sylvia shaking her head in despair, or tutting loudly, or frowning, or just generally shooting pursed-lip looks of disapproval in her general direction for reasons unknown.

Because of his job, Donna's father hadn't been around much when she'd been growing up and Donna had naturally transferred all the need for a father figure onto her beloved grandfather, Sylvia's father Wilf. In turn, Wilf doted on his feisty little granddaughter, encouraging her (so Sylvia claimed on more than one occasion) to grow wilful and disobedient, spontaneous and more than a little daring. The two formed a bond so tight that Sylvia often grew jealous of it – and this seething jealousy did little to improve the already-fraught relationship between Donna and her mother.

When Donna had met Lance and a wedding had been on the cards, things had looked up for a while. Sylvia finally saw the opportunity to witness her daughter moving onto greater things and perhaps more specifically, to witness her daughter moving out of the house. But that, of course, hadn't worked out _quite _the way Sylvia had hoped. Even though she had known, deep down, that Donna hadn't been responsible for the way things had transpired, she had still allowed the incident to nurture the sense of ambivalence she felt for her daughter.

Then Donna's father had died, suddenly and unexpectedly – and for a fleeting moment in time she and Donna had been united in their grief and loss. But Donna, being young and resilient, moved on much faster than Sylvia could ever have anticipated – and the older woman, despite knowing deep down that she shouldn't – had taken it as a personal slur. And again, she knew that it was unreasonable to place the blame for her husband's death in Donna's unwitting lap, but it was inevitable, really. So much of the way Donna was – her looks, her attitude, her simple _joie de vivre _was everything she had once loved in her late husband.

And to be constantly reminded of that was _hard_ for her. Why didn't anybody see that? Why was it always 'oh, give Donna a break, Sylvia' and 'everyone has to move on eventually, Sylvia'? Why didn't anyone seem to believe just how grief-stricken she had been? She knew why, of course, but struggled to put the thought into words. Nobody thought about her as being an emotional wreck, because it wasn't something that she _did_.

So Sylvia, always a hard, capable woman, had closed off the tap of grief for her husband and had instead transferred her negative emotions onto Donna. In her eyes, the girl was idle, never displaying ambition above wanting to take temporary placement after temporary placement. It helped, in a strange way. It gave Sylvia something to be angry about; dulled the feelings of unhappiness and dreadful loneliness that would come upon her when she lay alone in the bed at night. Her daughter, the temp. One hundred words a minute she might be capable of, but she was going nowhere. And she was going there fast.

And then the Doctor had come into her life.

It had hurt Sylvia beyond compare to discover the truth of where Donna had been over the course of the year. It had hurt because Wilf had known the truth – and had chosen not to share that with her. It had hurt because – if she could only admit it out loud – she had missed Donna's boisterous presence around the house. And above everything, it had hurt because when it was all over, when everything had been explained, she still could not find it in herself to throw her arms around her own daughter and express gratitude for her safety, whether she felt it or not.

That Doctor. The scruffy good-for-nothing. He had suggested – had _dared_ to suggest that Sylvia might want to share her feelings with Donna once in a while and she had felt an icy-cold dread steal across her. How _dare_ he? How _dare_ this eccentric man, with his suit and _trainers_, God forbid, come into her family's life and forever alter everything that she had known? How _dare_ he then make such presumption, then have the sheer _audacity_ to walk out and leave Sylvia with her feelings of inferiority, guilt and shame that she wasn't entirely sure were fully deserved?

The truth was, Sylvia was not a bad woman. She was a very, very long way from being a bad woman. She had grown up during hard times and whilst she had never been starved of love and affection from her father, her mother had always been more distant and uncommunicative. Left in a position where she'd never really appreciated motherly guidance, Sylvia's template for rearing her daughter had therefore been lacking.

No, she was not a bad woman. She wasn't even really that bad a mother. She was, however, emotionally distant and incapable of demonstrating love.

She _loved _Donna. Of that single fact, she was certain. How could she _not_ love Donna? She was the girl's mother, for goodness sake. There must have been a time when Donna was a child, a time when she could easily have put her arms around the girl and say everything with a hug, or a stroke of the hair. One of Sylvia's own earliest memories were of a time when she'd been ill in bed with a fever. Her mother had sat by the bedside, stroking her hair and cooling her temperature with a water soaked rag. She treasured that memory. It was one of the few times she could recall her mother having been tactile. It had been like water to a dying man: the gentle touch of her mother's hand doing far more to heal her malaise than any shop-purchased medicine would ever do.

_Perhaps_, Sylvia mused as she sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window, _perhaps Donna is more like me than I know. One of us must make the first move, and neither of us wants to do that_. She'd never thought of her daughter as being like her before and it made her feel strangely uncomfortable.

She stared morosely into her half-drunk cup of tea and, shaking her head, got to her feet. The Doctor had walked out of Donna's life a week ago – and in that time, she'd shown no sign at all of memory – for which, given what the Doctor had said would happen should she ever remember – she was remarkably grateful.

Standing at the sink, Sylvia looked out of the window. A resilient lot, human beings. Normality had resumed almost immediately. Her father was up at the allotment, as was his wont on a Saturday morning. He'd gone up this morning complaining that his potato seedlings would be suffering from the neglect caused by a week of insanity. Donna, unsurprisingly, was still in bed, despite the fact that it was near noon.

Donna had gone back to the temp agency on Monday morning as though nothing had ever happened. Sylvia had watched in slight envy as her daughter had laughed at the news reports, the stories and gossip – watched as they had all rolled off her like water off a duck's back – and had spent the past week audio typing in a poky little office somewhere in Camden.

_Camden_. Sylvia wrinkled her nose in slight disapproval.

She rinsed the cup out and set it on the draining board. The clouds outside parted momentarily to allow sunshine to touch through the kitchen window and for the briefest of moments, Sylvia allowed her eyes to close and found herself welcoming the warmth of oncoming summer. Her father had told her that the Doctor had said there would be a lot of rain and the sun was a welcome distraction.

"Morning, Mum."

Sylvia's eyes snapped open and she turned to the door where Donna stood in her pyjamas, her mane of hair in disarray from sleep, looking rather like a red-headed yawn on legs.

"Almost afternoon, actually," she began to retort, but bit back the harsh words shamefully. She knew that she had to change, but genuinely had no idea where to start. And then, out of nowhere, something deeply embedded in her psyche crept out carefully from behind the rock of hard emotions that had kept it buried for so long.

"Morning, love. Do you want a cup of tea? I was just making another..." She hadn't been, but it didn't matter.

"Yeah, that'd be brilliant." Donna plopped herself down in a seat at the table and started keying madly on her mobile phone, exchanging messages with her plethora of friends, whilst Sylvia silently made the tea. She settled the mug down in front of her daughter, who made a faintly appreciative sound that Sylvia took to be a 'thank you'.

An awkward silence settled between mother and daughter, broken only by the occasional bleep of Donna's mobile as another text message came through. Sylvia, who would normal roll her eyes and walk away at such a juncture forced herself to stay where she was. Forced herself to make conversation. Forced herself to make an effort.

"How's work?" Two words. How come this was so difficult?

"Why?" Donna was immediately on the defensive and Sylvia felt the old familiar surge of irritation at her daughter's suspicions.

_Maybe it's because of you that she's like this_. The thought was neither welcome nor pleasant, but once it arrived in her head, it would not go away again.

"I'm just interested," she said, keeping her tone carefully light. Donna's eyes narrowed slightly as she considered her mother, trying to work out where the hidden attack was likely to come from. Finding no indication that criticism was imminent, Donna's expression changed and became animated as she chattered on in her inimitable style about the office where she had been working, the characters she worked with, the gossip she'd learned in the time she'd been there, going out to that bar last night and meeting some young man she could have _sworn_ she'd met before...

All the words poured from Donna's mouth into one long sentence with few pauses, no punctuation and even less cohesion – and by halfway through the monologue, Sylvia was only half-listening. Not for the first time that morning, she underwent something of an epiphany.

_This is what the Doctor meant_, she realised. _When he said you were brilliant. The way you can go anywhere and blend in. The way that people talk to you and like you – and the way you touch their lives, even if just for a moment, filling it with your light. And you're my daughter._

She felt a rush of affection and pride for her daughter and on a whim, reached a hand across the table, tucking Donna's bed-hair neatly back behind one ear. The younger woman stopped talking instantly, surprised by the unfamiliar and yet very genuine gesture.

"I'm so proud of you," said Sylvia, in the kind of soft voice that Donna had always yearned for but had never expected to hear.

"What for?" She was confused, but not displeased. Buoyed by this, Sylvia continued.

"For lots of things. Mostly, though, for being you." She hesitated. "I'm sorry if I don't say it enough."

"Mum, what's the matter with you? Are you ill or something? Is it Gramps? What is it?" Donna was genuinely anxious. Sylvia laughed, a real warmth that Donna hadn't heard since before Dad had died. "Mum?"

Change, Sylvia reflected, taking a moment's simple pleasure in the stunned look of confusion on Donna's face, was difficult for everyone. She patted Donna's hand warmly and impulsively leaned over to kiss her daughter's cheek.

Had the Doctor known that he would set this chain of events in motion with his words? Sylvia suspected, from little she'd learned of the man, that it was more than likely.

_Thank you,_ she thought.

"I'm fine, love. Never better. Now for heaven's sake, finish your tea and go and get dressed. You've wasted half the day already."

Change was also, it seemed, likely to be a slow process for Sylvia Noble.

But it had to start somewhere.

**(c) S Cawkwell, 2008**


End file.
